Gpu dock using a mobo

[Pc-gamer101]

Hi people,
I have a laptop and was wondering if I could use a motherboard as a external gpu dock for my gpu. As my parents are going to buy me parts for a pc for my birthday until then I am thinking of getting these 3 parts (mobo psu,gpu) so I can play on my laptop and then when it's my birthday use these parts as well as the parts my parents got me.
Does the motherboard need a hdmi slot ?as the gpu dock has a hdmi slot into a pci slot that plugs into the laptop. Thanks

 

[harrilynch]

Actually you may not even need a motherboard. A new trend that has started in the last year is the use of eGPUs. I have the GDC beast (http://www.gearbest.com/laptop-accessories/pp_229101.html) and it works perfectly for me, however success may vary based on the laptop. Basically what it does, is you use a mini PCIe slot from the back of the computer on its own motherboard, and you attach it to the egpu holder which has the gpu. What normally happens, is you have to remove the wireless card from the mini PCIe slot and replace it with the cord. You can still use wireless from a usb wifi adapter though (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704141&cm_re=usb_wifi-_-33-704-141-_-Product). There are plenty of videos on how to do this and I can explain if you need more help.

 

[Pc-gamer101]

Actually you may not even need a motherboard. A new trend that has started in the last year is the use of eGPUs. I have the GDC beast (http://www.gearbest.com/laptop-accessories/pp_229101.html) and it works perfectly for me, however success may vary based on the laptop. Basically what it does, is you use a mini PCIe slot from the back of the computer on its own motherboard, and you attach it to the egpu holder which has the gpu. What normally happens, is you have to remove the wireless card from the mini PCIe slot and replace it with the cord. You can still use wireless from a usb wifi adapter though (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704141&cm_re=usb_wifi-_-33-704-141-_-Product). There are plenty of videos on how to do this and I can explain if you need more help.

Thanks,but I was hoping I could use a motherboard for this and then reuse the motherboard for when I am building a pc for my birthday is this possible? Or will I just have to go with your solution .
Thanks for the reply.

 

[k1114]

8+ years is hardly a new trend. What gpu dock do you have? A mobo can't be used though. There is no way to connect a laptop to it other than it being a pc on its own. Hdmi out of a mobo is video only, not pcie data which a graphic card needs.

 

[Chugalug_]

Yep, unless you spend a very high amount of money on a Thunderbolt 3 GPU dock followed by a GPU you're not going to get much performance gain.
Additionally your laptop will most likely bottleneck it.
What would be your budget for such an upgrade?
A standalone $500 PC would be a better choice.

 

[harrilynch]

Actually you may not even need a motherboard. A new trend that has started in the last year is the use of eGPUs. I have the GDC beast (http://www.gearbest.com/laptop-accessories/pp_229101.html) and it works perfectly for me, however success may vary based on the laptop. Basically what it does, is you use a mini PCIe slot from the back of the computer on its own motherboard, and you attach it to the egpu holder which has the gpu. What normally happens, is you have to remove the wireless card from the mini PCIe slot and replace it with the cord. You can still use wireless from a usb wifi adapter though (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704141&cm_re=usb_wifi-_-33-704-141-_-Product). There are plenty of videos on how to do this and I can explain if you need more help.

Thanks,but I was hoping I could use a motherboard for this and then reuse the motherboard for when I am building a pc for my birthday is this possible? Or will I just have to go with your solution .
Thanks for the reply.

Short answer is no. The motherboard is in no way designed to work with a laptop while the eGPU docks were created for the purpose of working with laptops. I would not consider it much of a waste of money, I got mine on eBay for $30. Also, I have another PC that is in another room, and depending on where I need to be, I can just plug my only graphics card into that computer. Be aware, the performance of the graphics card drops about 30% when using it on a laptop, which makes sense because it is going through a series of adapters. My laptop has a 4 core i7 CPU which doesn't really bottleneck the gpu, but if you're plugging a high performance gpu into a laptop with pentium or something, then expect the CPU to bottleneck much of the performance.

 

[Pc-gamer101]

8+ years is hardly a new trend. What gpu dock do you have? A mobo can't be used though. There is no way to connect a laptop to it other than it being a pc on its own. Hdmi out of a mobo is video only, not pcie data which a graphic card needs.

Thanks for the reply. I currently don't have a gpu dock and was wondering if I could use a motherboard , because I was going to reuse the motherboard for a actual pc build with other parts that I was going to get for my birthday later on in the year, but now I guess I will go with the gpu dock. Thanks.

 

[Pc-gamer101]

Actually you may not even need a motherboard. A new trend that has started in the last year is the use of eGPUs. I have the GDC beast (http://www.gearbest.com/laptop-accessories/pp_229101.html) and it works perfectly for me, however success may vary based on the laptop. Basically what it does, is you use a mini PCIe slot from the back of the computer on its own motherboard, and you attach it to the egpu holder which has the gpu. What normally happens, is you have to remove the wireless card from the mini PCIe slot and replace it with the cord. You can still use wireless from a usb wifi adapter though (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833704141&cm_re=usb_wifi-_-33-704-141-_-Product). There are plenty of videos on how to do this and I can explain if you need more help.

Thanks,but I was hoping I could use a motherboard for this and then reuse the motherboard for when I am building a pc for my birthday is this possible? Or will I just have to go with your solution .
Thanks for the reply.

Short answer is no. The motherboard is in no way designed to work with a laptop while the eGPU docks were created for the purpose of working with laptops. I would not consider it much of a waste of money, I got mine on eBay for $30. Also, I have another PC that is in another room, and depending on where I need to be, I can just plug my only graphics card into that computer. Be aware, the performance of the graphics card drops about 30% when using it on a laptop, which makes sense because it is going through a series of adapters. My laptop has a 4 core i7 CPU which doesn't really bottleneck the gpu, but if you're plugging a high performance gpu into a laptop with pentium or something, then expect the CPU to bottleneck much of the performance.

Thanks, I am going to get a gpu dock

 

[k1114]

It's not a series of adapters that's the issue, although it is just 1 adapter, mpcie to pcie x16. Even with a series of adapters, data isn't being converted in any way so it's similar to a pcie riser. The circuit board on the adapter is for power management as well as the usb port. The reason for the performance decrease is the mpcie slot is only x1 bandwidth. Some games have seen up to a 50% decrease but most don't do too bad.

~$35 is the normal price for a mpcie adapter. Check to make sure you don't have to completely disassembly your laptop to get to the port. I've seen some that do with a unibody case. Also you may want to know if mpcie isn't the only slot you could use.